


Never Let Me Go

by jazzjo



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2707532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla has one choice, just one. She can ‘live’ for eternity in this afterlife with Ell, never having to feel pain of see anguish ever again. Or she can return to life, one last time. One last time as a human, and spend the rest of it with Laura. It was barely even a question of who she would choose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Let Me Go

“I love — loved — you. You said it yourself, you weren’t a hero,” Laura curled into as small a ball as she could on Carmilla’s bed, the yellow pillow in her arms and the t-shirt covered pillow pressed into her side by the wall, “You weren’t supposed to do any of that heroic sacrifice thing. You were supposed to come back alive.”

 

She had sent everyone out of the room pretty quickly. Once everyone had settled and no one was woozy from blood loss or anything else, they were all exiled from her room. Danny offered her extra mattress to Betty, and the girl had quietly agreed, following her back to her TA’s quarters. 

 

Laura buried her nose in the pillow in her arms, breathing in the scent of the girl who had always stolen it. She couldn’t have said those three words. Just three bloody words that would have let Carmilla know. Now she would never have the chance to say them. The distinction between ‘love’ and ‘love _d_ ’ was tragically wide. She would never get to say those words to Carmilla, and Carmilla would never get to hear them. 

 

She got to say goodbye. She had been the one prepared to die, and to never come back. She had thought so very, very, wrongly of her roommate and now it was too late for anything.

 

It was too late for Carmilla to even get to say goodbye. 

 

There was too much going through her mind for her to even try to sleep, she knew, and she would not try. What was one night’s sleep to her when Carmilla had entered an eternal sleep and she had not even been able to pull her tiny alabaster body from beneath the destruction that had played out. They had not even gotten to bury her. 

 

The room was empty, hollowed out. Laura tried to huddle in the sheets of Carmilla’s bed, but warmth did not come. 

 

The quaking of her shoulders could not be attributed distinctly to either the sobs wracking her body or the cold of the half empty room, and in the breathy silence someone tried to force an ‘I love you, too’ out into the ripped atmosphere. 

 

She wanted to reach out, she wanted to touch Laura and hold her and tell her that everything would be alright. She wanted to tell her that everything would be perfectly fine and that she would move on. She would live. She would grow old and Carmilla would have been nothing but a couple of blacked out pages in the illustrious tome that her life would be. She would love again, she would build her life to something that she would enjoy. She would die content. She would die loved. 

 

She wanted to smooth the sobs away and to shield her from the cold, but she could not touch a thing. She had to leave the world as it lay before her alone, because all things considered she was no longer a part of it. 

 

Had she even been a part of it, really?

 

“Pity, isn’t it?” A smooth, lilting voice sounded behind her, “Neither of you ever told each other how you felt, and now it won’t stop torturing either of you.”

 

Carmilla spun around, turning her back on Laura for the first time since she had gone, and Laura had bent over what was left of her cold body, sobbing, cursing and berating herself. 

 

“You could have it back, you know?” The voice was formless, just a haze of swirls that were dark burning red and brilliant crystalline white, “Or you could have eternity, here.”

 

“What’s the catch?” She set her lips into a thin, hard line, raising one eyebrow and resuming the demeanour that she had so often assumed when she had been in Silas most recently, “Nothing like this ever comes without a price.”

 

“Well, aren’t you a clever one. Not much, really,” She could feel the smirk forming in the voice’s visage, “You could stay here, for the rest of eternity. Forever, really. And you can have Ell again, before all that drama with Mommy Dearest went down. Dancing and laughing and never growing old, you could have that.”

 

The voice seemed to step closer to her, its presence looming before it continued, “Or you could go back. She won’t have to let you go and vice versa, yada yada yada, but you will be human. Entirely vulnerable and susceptible to all human damages. You will have one lifetime, and that is it. However short or however long that may be.”

 

A willowy girl stepped from behind the misted voice, her hair tied back in intricate braids and her slim body clothed in the same ornate gown that she had worn that first night they had gone dancing. Her smile curved in the same way that Carmilla had remembered in the past few centuries, the smile that she had just begun to forget. One hand was outstretched, her ivory skin set off by the deep reds of the mist now beside her, inviting Carmilla into this forever after.

 

She couldn’t.

 

“What do I have to do to get back to Laura?”

 

Ell’s eyes fell, darkness swooping in to cover every touch of light that had previously been there. 

 

“Kill me.”

 

“I’m done killing people, Ell. Done,” She turned her head back to the still sobbing girl in their dorm room, sighing, “There has to be another way.”

 

“Stake yourself through the heart, and take that chance,” The voice filled every crevice in the place they were in as it emanated from the wisps once more, “You may go back, you may just lose any chance of eternity or life forever.”

 

The wisps procured a stake for her, sharpened to a glinting point and somewhat stained with dark burgundy. Carmilla took a breath, one she did not need, turning so that her eyes were locked on Laura’s quivering form, forcing the thought of that infuriating girl into her mind and keeping it there. In one singular fluid motion she thrust the stake into her heart, feeling her sternum crack and her unbeating heart to suddenly lurch into motion. Once the stake went in, Ell disappeared and the next thing she felt was her body hitting the ground.

 

Something was weighing her down. Before anything came into proper focus her hands sought to push the weight off of her chest. The dead weight would not give. Her arms felt weak — atrophied and wasted, almost — and when she forgot to breathe a thick burning that burst through her forced her mouth open and a rush of air to enter. Following each new beat of her heart Carmilla forced herself to wriggle out of the burden that lay on top of her, finally succeeding in wrenching herself out of what she had realised was a pile of bodies made up of a couple of Mother’s minions, then the Dean herself. 

 

Reaching down for a brief moment, Carmilla shut the eyes splayed wide open of the woman who had taken care of her and taught her the ways of the vampire world. With that, she took off in a run that was slower than she had grown accustomed to, relishing in the burn that it conjured in her chest and the surroundings that did not blur around her. 

 

She didn’t stop, not until she reached their door and the thrumming in her chest made her stop for a moment. The door, for once, was shut. Pushing it open as silently as she could, she stepped in and shut it with the same fanfare as she had opening it, and made soft wide strides until she crouched next to the shaking form of Laura Hollis. 

 

Putting her arms around the small writhing form, she whispered into the chestnut hair, “Hey, cupcake. Miss me?”

 

She never even got another word out of her mouth before a sharp  _thwack_  caught her on her inner arm, and burning brown eyes stared into hers. 

 

“How can you be back. Is this some sort of joke?” 

 

“I made a choice, Laura, and you’re going to have to live with it for a long time to come.”

 

As she sat on the floor of their room, her head resting on Laura’s lap, Laura prodded the story out of her — about Ell, about the stake, about everything that had happened. A soft kiss was dropped on her lips, and warm hands took her own as Carmilla blushed for the first time in three centuries. 

 

“I should have told you this earlier, Carm,” A thumb ran over the crease between her thumb and index finger as the words continued, “I love you.”

 

“I love you too, Laura.”

 

_She’d take waltzing with Laura for a lifetime over an eternity with history anyhow._


End file.
